Collaborative Task and Path Planning for Heterogeneous Robotic Teams using Multi-Agent PPO

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rubio, Matthias, Richter, Julia, Kolvenbach, Hendrik, Hutter, Marco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914437589368832
author Rubio, Matthias
Richter, Julia
Kolvenbach, Hendrik
Hutter, Marco
author_facet Rubio, Matthias
Richter, Julia
Kolvenbach, Hendrik
Hutter, Marco
contents Efficient robotic extraterrestrial exploration requires robots with diverse capabilities, ranging from scientific measurement tools to advanced locomotion. A robotic team enables the distribution of tasks over multiple specialized subsystems, each providing specific expertise to complete the mission. The central challenge lies in efficiently coordinating the team to maximize utilization and the extraction of scientific value. Classical planning algorithms scale poorly with problem size, leading to long planning cycles and high inference costs due to the combinatorial growth of possible robot-target allocations and possible trajectories. Learning-based methods are a viable alternative that move the scaling concern from runtime to training time, setting a critical step towards achieving real-time planning. In this work, we present a collaborative planning strategy based on Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization (MAPPO) to coordinate a team of heterogeneous robots to solve a complex target allocation and scheduling problem. We benchmark our approach against single-objective optimal solutions obtained through exhaustive search and evaluate its ability to perform online replanning in the context of a planetary exploration scenario.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_01213
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Collaborative Task and Path Planning for Heterogeneous Robotic Teams using Multi-Agent PPO
Rubio, Matthias
Richter, Julia
Kolvenbach, Hendrik
Hutter, Marco
Robotics
Multiagent Systems
Efficient robotic extraterrestrial exploration requires robots with diverse capabilities, ranging from scientific measurement tools to advanced locomotion. A robotic team enables the distribution of tasks over multiple specialized subsystems, each providing specific expertise to complete the mission. The central challenge lies in efficiently coordinating the team to maximize utilization and the extraction of scientific value. Classical planning algorithms scale poorly with problem size, leading to long planning cycles and high inference costs due to the combinatorial growth of possible robot-target allocations and possible trajectories. Learning-based methods are a viable alternative that move the scaling concern from runtime to training time, setting a critical step towards achieving real-time planning. In this work, we present a collaborative planning strategy based on Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization (MAPPO) to coordinate a team of heterogeneous robots to solve a complex target allocation and scheduling problem. We benchmark our approach against single-objective optimal solutions obtained through exhaustive search and evaluate its ability to perform online replanning in the context of a planetary exploration scenario.
title Collaborative Task and Path Planning for Heterogeneous Robotic Teams using Multi-Agent PPO
topic Robotics
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.01213